Farm Leadership
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House Ways & Means Committee Votes to Make $500,000 Section 179 Permanent!
The House Ways and Means Committee approved today six tax extenders including making Section 179 permanent at the $500,000 level. There are an additional 50 or so extenders that this committee will review and vote on. It is good news that the committee voted on Section 179 at this level, however, this is just at […]
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ARC Versus PLC – 2014-2018
We have gotten several questions regarding which program is better – ARC or PLC. There is no one right answer to this question since there are so many unknown variables. However, I decided to run out the numbers for corn, soybeans and wheat assuming certain crop marketing prices for each year. For corn, I elected […]
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Are You Still Running Windows XP?!
Windows XP has been around for over a decade now and I am fairly certain that many farmers are still using this as their desktop operating system. Microsoft only officially supported this software until April 8, 2014. After that date, they will stop updating the software for any new viruses, malware or other items that […]
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Social Security Drops Efforts To Collect Old Debts From Children of Debtors. Maybe.
As a follow up to a recent post, the Social Security Administration recently announced its suspending its efforts to collect old debts that stretch beyond 10 years. Acting commissioner Carolyn W. Colvin had this to say in an official statement: “I have directed an immediate halt to further referrals under the Treasury Offset Program to […]
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Another Tax Season Bites the Dust
I am waiting for my oldest son’s age to finally surpass the number of tax seasons I have completed. He is 27 (and working at a CPA firm in Costa Mesa, CA) and his little brother, age 25 works at Price Waterhouse Coopers in downtown LA (there is a chance he gets to spend 3 […]
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Social Security, Treasury Targets Taxpayers for Their Parent’s Decades-Old Debts
According to a recent Washington Post article, the Treasury Department has been seizing tax refunds or demanding payment from hundreds of thousands of Americans on some very old debts due to a single sentence in the 2008 farm bill that removed the 10-year statute of limitations on debt owed to the government. Since 2011, the […]
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Trusts Can Get You in Trouble
In a Tax Court filing from last week (Estate of Elwood H. Olsen, TC Memo 2014-58), we find how much tax can be owed if taxpayers do not administer trusts correctly. In the case, Mr. Olsen passed away in 2008 at the age of 92. In 1994, Mr. Olsen and his wife Grace each formed […]
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Farm Bill Webinar
This morning at 10 am Central Time we had an one hour webinar on the new farm bill. We had several hundred people accessing the webinar and based upon the amount of questions that came over the screen as I was discussing the farm bill, this appears to be a very hot topic right now. Since there […]
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Patronage Dividend Notices Can Be Sent by Email or Posted to a Website
The IRS recently issued a private letter ruling (PLR 201413002) allowing a cooperative to provide notice by email or a posting to their website instead of mailing all notices by regular mail. In order for Cooperatives to get a deduction for their patronage dividends, they must provide written notice by a certain date each year. With postage […]
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Senate Finance Committee Proposes Two-Year Extension of Section 179 and Bonus Depreciation
Senator Ron Wyden (D – Oregon), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has submitted a bill to extend many of the provisions that automatically expired at December 31, 2013. Of special interest to farmers is that Section 179 would be retained at the $500,000 level for 2014 and 2015 AND 50% bonus depreciation would be extended […]